Solace
by Diary
Summary: Trying to deal with Santos's death and his isolation from his family, Justin experiences his first relationship and breakup. Complete. Edited slightly.


Disclaimer: I do not own Ugly Betty.

* * *

People in Queens had pretty much mastered integration.

Justin never had any close friends, but all the girls loved to pour over fashion magazines with him, and most of the boys would gossip with him.

Everything changed when his dad died.

He no longer fit with his family. His mom was too busy crying or hanging out with old ladies to help him bedazzle shirts, Aunt Betty was too busy with Mode and Henry to look at stars with him, and his grandfather, when he finally got back, was suddenly awkward around him. It was no secret he never wanted Santos around, but Justin couldn't help missing him.

The boys didn't really understand.

"So, what? My mom said it wouldn't have lasted; a hurricane meeting a tornado, she said. A police report waiting to happen."

Another said, "Well, it's not like he was really family. You hate basketball and football and only like girls as friends. Remember how he and your mama kept arguing about how you were too much of a sissy?"

The girls kept trying to give him food and telling him it was okay to cry.

Only Tammy, Gina's daughter, said, "Hey, we suck at this. So, just tell us what we can do to help, alright?"

Her mother was away on a cruise, and she'd taken to hanging out at other people's houses, not wanting to deal with her grandparents. He found himself talking to her, telling her he wanted his dad to be proud, confiding that it was his fault.

She scoffed, smacked her gum, and hit him with her surprisingly heavy, tiny little purse. "Right. My grandmother would call that a crock a' shit. Your daddy was buying you a present; that's what real ones are s'posed to do. People aren't s'posed to wave guns around and shoot people for money. It isn't your fault that," she said a word that left Justin gaping, "killed him."

"But if I hadn't-"

"Oh, so what," she said, bored. "You stole the play, and he wanted to buy you a present. I do bad things all the time, worse than stealing a stupid play, and my mom's still alive. What if you hadn't done it, and your dad had still gone? Maybe to get some gum, or condoms, or milk, or even a present for your mom. Would you blame her?"

"Of course not," Justin answered, processing.

"Then get over yourself," Tammy said, blowing a perfect bubble.

…

After that, he started spending more time with her. She dressed a lot like both of their mothers, said words that made him blush, and just looked at him like she wanted to commit him when he talked about musicals, but she made him feel less lonely. In many ways, she got him.

"Yeah, I screwed up my mom's life, too," she said, one day. "Prom night, crappy rented car, and she believed him when he said she couldn't get pregnant the first time. Said it was all scientific. Well, if she were smart, she'd have gotten fifty dollars for bus fare and taken herself down to that free clinic in Manhattan. They help stupid girls who can't afford it. But she decided to have me."

"I don't know if my mom ever thought of that," Justin said, wondering. Would her life have been better if she'd borrowed fifty dollars and went to the clinic? Would his grandparents and Aunt Betty have a better life if they didn't have to help his mom with him?

"Probably not," Tammy answered, digging out frosty blue nail polish and kicking off her shoes. "Do my toenails, 'kay? I mean, y'all are Catholic. That funny guy in the dress thinks that the baby inside the tummy is the same as the ones outside of it."

"We only go to church on Christmas," Justin said, starting to paint her toenails. "My grandpa and mom pray to the little saint figurines, sometimes, but that's all."

"Eh, every now and then, my grandparents will make me wear a really boring, ugly dress and drag me to church. The preacher is always going on about how God hates everyone but that if you follow all these rules, he'll let you in Heaven."

"I wonder if that's where my dad is."

Tammy looked thoughtful for a minute. "You know, our moms had a truce when they were both pregnant. She told me that your mama once slapped your daddy when she heard he called her fat and yelled at him that if he wanted to be a deadbeat loser, that was his call, but don't he dare ever say anything bad about her when she was doing everything she could to take care of you. I don't really know your mom, but I don't think she would have tried so hard to take care of you, even when that meant getting fat, if she didn't love you. Even after, she coulda just dropped you off at a hospital and never come back, but she didn't."

"What about your mom?"

"I know she loves me," Tammy answered. "I also know that she was going places before she believed a no-good jerk who skipped town." Cocking her head, she said, "You know, you're lucky yours came back. That's more than some of us will ever get.

"I guess," Justin agreed, wondering why his grandpa didn't see it like that. "I want to be more like my dad."

"What's stopping ya?"

"Lack of knowledge?"

"No offence, but your dad wasn't anything special," Tammy said, crossing her ankles so that he could start on the other foot without having to move. "You wanna know how to act like him, you just watch the other men around here. Most of them are pretty much exactly like him, except for the being smart enough or lucky enough not to get a girl pregnant before being ready to marry her. Then, you start acting. You're pretty good at that."

…

So, Justin tried.

He practised drinking milk out of the bottle, even though the thought of all the possible shared germs involved made him feel sick to his stomach. He wore leather that was grossly out of season. He stopped going to drama, ignoring the sadness, because it seemed like one of the few places he still managed to fit in at, and he tried to skip rocks and play ball games and talk about how hot girls were, even though most of the girls were still in the really awkward stages of puberty. When even the few genuinely pretty ones came around and he felt nothing but a vague feeling of yes, they were nice to look at, he wondered if he'd ever like girls like his dad and the other boys did. At one point, he asked Daniel, who his dad had seemed to like, to help him try to play basketball.

Betty looked at him as if he were an alien invader found in comic books that one of the boys loved, and his grandfather was always frowning. Once, he heard him say, "Hilda, mija, Justin needs you to stop indulging this behaviour. I've always tried to leave this kind of thing up to you, but if Betty and I need to-"

The oven had went off, and Justin hadn't heard the rest.

He wondered, though, what exactly it meant.

His grandpa had always been the indulgent one; that was no secret to anyone. The few times he did something that caused his mom or Aunt Betty or both to punish him, Ignacio had been his friend, sneaking him sweets or suggesting they were maybe being a too harsh. He couldn't remember a time his grandpa had yelled at him in anger or punished him.

He came to the conclusion his grandpa simply couldn't love someone who had the same blood as Santos. That night, he cried on and off until morning, claiming he thought he was coming down with something with his aunt noticed the dark purple under his eyes and the red veins inside.

Later that day, he asked Tammy to be his girlfriend.

"Only if you promise not to get me pregnant before we turn eighteen," she said, seriously. "And you have to remember my birthday. I'm not sure why that's important, sometimes, I don't even remember it, but Mom once dumped a guy who bought me some cool toys because he forgot hers, so, I guess it's important."

"Okay," he agreed, hoping that her birthday fell on an interesting day on his Broadway-a-Day calender.

Nodding, she leaned over and kissed him, causing him to automatically step back. It was a brief kiss, much like the kind he shared with his mother, but he hadn't been expecting it.

"Boy and girls kiss when they go out," she told him, looking at him in amusement and confusion.

"Shouldn't we actually go on a date first," he'd asked, saying the first thing that seemed reasonable in his mind.

Shrugging, she said, "Sure. But we gotta hold hands."

"Okay," he'd agreed, linking hands with her, looking down at her bubble-gum painted nails.

They made plans to skip a field trip with her cousin, who she insisted on dragging almost everywhere, and she swiped some beer from her house. After they drank half of it, they kissed. It was weird and a little uncomfortable. He could smell her breath, and her lips tasted waxy. When she rubbed their bottom halves together, though, he felt his body responding, and he thought that maybe he was finally starting to understand.

Henry ruined it by appearing.

…

Later that night, Hilda came into his room and said, "Baby, I heard you were dating Gina Gambarro's girl."

"Tammy," he answered. Seeing her frown, he said, "Mom, don't make us go all Romeo and Juliet on you. Tammy's been helping me since Dad died."

"Okay, kiddo," she agreed, looking thoughtful. "You can date whoever you want. But if someone you're dating every hurts you, I'll go Psycho on their ass, okay?"

Laughing, Justin had hugged her. "Thanks, Mom."

When she left, he snuck out, hiding on the stairs as the three talked.

"Hilda, I don't mean to stereotype, but I think we can all safely say that girls and Justin and kissing does not mix!"

"Betty's right, mija. There's men who can be, well, and still like women. And then, there's people who you just know."

"Look, we all know Justin is going to bring home a cute boy someday," his mother said, exasperated. "We've known since he was two. But he said Tammy's been helping him deal with losing Santos. She's a little skank, but he looked happy when he talked about her. He'll figure things out on his own; I just have to let him do it."

Crawling back up the stairs, Justin tried to sort everything out. A boy? He hadn't know that since he was two. The only thing he did know was that his father would never love him if that happened. He'd heard him talk about gays, men like Marc who had boyfriends instead of girlfriends, about how disgusting they were.

He remembered a story of how his father once stole his father's keys and took a girlfriend, not Hilda, to New Jersey. He didn't think going there is a good idea, but he came up with the idea of taking Tammy and her cousin somewhere out of Queens, where they could explore and just get away from everyone.

…

That plan didn't work.

…

A sharp headache and a dull stomach-ache assaulted him as he was pulled out of the car. In his peripheral vision, he saw Tammy and her cousin being pulled out.

"Follow the light with your eyes," someone told him.

He heard someone say, "Santos's kid."

"How many fingers, buddy?"

"Four," he answered.

"I know his mother; the Suarez's are good people. Hilda won't let this go on."

Still in a daze, he sat in the back of a police car while the officer, a classmate of his mother's, escorted Tammy to her grandparents, and then, the cousin to his parents. Then, he found himself yelling at his mom in the kitchen, wondering why his father had to die, why he ever came back in the first place, and wishing everything would stop hurting so much.

…

Later, she came up to his room, putting an ice-pack on his head. "Here's the deal, kid: If you want to date Tammy, that's fine. But you can't see her unless there are adults around anymore."

"Mom! You've already taken away TV, music, and my magazines." She'd wanted to take away his bedazzler and art supplies, too, but his grandfather and aunt obviously didn't completely hate him, having stepped in and convinced her otherwise.

"You crashed my car! Do you have any idea how lucky you are that a headache and stomach-ache is all you got?"

Suddenly, she was crying, which made his throat close up.

"Mom, I'm sorry. I-"

"Papito, what happened to your dad is heartbreaking, but if I ever lost you, I'd die," she choked out, reaching over. "I was able to deal with losing Mami, and if I have to, I can take losing your grandpa. I could even manage if something happened to your Aunt Betty. But if I ever lost you, that would be the end of everything." Pulling him into a hug, she said, "And I swear to God, that's the honest truth. It's not me being dramatic or trying to guilt you. Ever since I first held you, it's been you and me."

Then, she pulled back and said, "He loved you, sweetheart, but he had trouble seeing how special you are. Don't lose that specialness, okay? We both know your dad screwed up so much, but he'd never forgive himself if he truly hurt you. I want you to be happy and special. Promise me you'll stop trying to be whatever it is you're trying so hard to be; just be you."

"I promise," he said, ignoring the tears falling down his own eyes.

After that, he stopped wearing the out-of-season leather, started using a cup again, and went back to drama club. He and Tammy only saw each other during lunch and recess; she was on total lockdown until her mom came back. His mother insisted he talk to the school counsellor for an undefined period of time.

…

One night, when he was sitting in his room, bored out his mind, there was a knock on his door. "Come in," he called, wondering if he there was anything in his room that he hadn't bedazzled; maybe he could try reading one of the Spanish books laying around the house. He probably wouldn't understand much of it, but he'd already read all the English ones, including the cookbooks and ones containing prayers and rituals.

His grandfather came in and asked, "How are you doing, mijo?"

"She won't really keep this up until I turn eighteen, will she," Justin asked, desperately. If so, he was running away, he decided.

Laughing, his grandpa said, "She and Betty are out. Why don't we watch a movie? I managed to sneak that Camelot musical out of your mother's room."

"You're the best, Grandpa!" He jumped up and hugged him, feeling Ignacio kiss his head and rub his neck.

"We have 'til nine," Ignacio said. "I made lemonade and those raisin cookies you like so much."

That's when things started to truly get better, though Justin still occasionally found himself crying through the night, wondering and hurting.

…

A few weeks later, Gina Gambarro came back married. Her husband wanted to move her and Tammy to Rome, a city in Upstate New York, where he had his practise.

Tammy gave him a sad look and said, "Long-distance just won't work."

Nodding, feeling a sadness settle over him, he asked, "Do you like him?"

"I think so," she answered. "He's definitely not a pervert, and he really loves Mom. He gave me a really dorky necklace, but y'know, Mom hasn't been with someone who gave me presents since that guy who forgot her birthday. Maybe he can be a real daddy to me."

"I'll miss you," he said. Then, he leaned over and kissed her.

...

They stayed in contact for a few of months, and then, without realising it, they stopped.

Justin never forgot her, though.


End file.
